


Witcher, Butcher, Storyteller

by rollingforinitiative



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Everyone Has Issues, Gen, Good Parent Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22516336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rollingforinitiative/pseuds/rollingforinitiative
Summary: The sacking of Cintra was over. Nilfgaard had been held back at Sodden. Geralt was probably the one person on the Continent most capable of keeping her safe. She had no reason to be shaking where she lay, biting her tongue to keep a gasp inside.The silence was broken once more. “Would you like me to tell you a story?”----------Two people who need someone find someone.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 14
Kudos: 207





	1. Chapter 1

Smoke. It was all around her. Smoke and the anguished screams of a slain people. She stumbled forward, calling for her grandmother, but she was met only with the taste of blood on her tongue. Then, hands were grabbing at her--fingers twisting through her cloak, her hair, dragging her through the thick darkness. She cried out again, for anyone to find her. Anyone to help her anyone to protect her. 

Through the haze, a figure began to emerge. Tall, broad-shouldered, and wielding a sword. It stretched out its hand for her, and she reached back desperately, fighting with all her strength to pull free of the hands still clutching her tight. She reached and reached, and took the figure’s hand. It was soft and warm.

Then the figure stepped out of the darkness, and she met with horror the archer in the feathered helmet. She tried to jerk her hand away, but he held it tight, smiling down at her. She screamed, but no sound came out, and the hands were covering her mouth, and she was drowning, and--

Ciri sat straight up in bed, screaming. There was something still clinging to her, and she frantically kicked to shake it off. She scrambled backward, but her back met a wall. Still trapped.

A pair of strong arms encircled her, pulling her into a wide chest. She was held tight again, but this embrace was warm and comforting. Her screams turned to sobs, and she curled her fingers into his shirt and pulled herself closer. 

“It’s all right,” Geralt said softly. “You’re safe.” He rocked her back and forth and ran his hand down her hair until she stopped shaking. Her breathing evened out, and after a moment, she pulled away and wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve. Geralt kept a hand on her back, watching her compose herself. His yellow eyes were stony as ever, but a hint of concern creased his brow.

“Are you all right?” 

Ciri took a few deep breaths and looked back up at him. “Yes, thank you.” She sat up straight and pressed her lips together, masking the tremble. “It was just a dream.” Her body was still tense with adrenaline, but she didn’t want to keep Geralt up. He had paid for this room with his own hard-earned coin, and she brought with her nothing but another mouth to feed. After spending a week traveling north to keep her away from the Nilfgaardian army, he deserved all the rest he could get. 

Geralt looked her up and down and hummed. He obviously didn’t believe her. “If you need anything, I’m here.” His bedroll was spread on the floor near the fireplace, which was just a slight red glow buried amongst the coals. Ciri had tried to insist that Geralt take the bed, but he seemed to be a very stubborn man, and a hard look from him convinced her she would get nowhere by arguing. 

He lay back down on his spot on the floor, and Ciri hesitantly pulled the kicked-off blanket back over herself. She was safe. She had found Geralt. The bed was reasonably soft; softer, definitely, than all the times she’d had to sleep on the cold ground with nothing but her cloak for comfort. She let her eyes close, and she drifted.

“Ciri?”

She woke with a start to see Geralt propped up on one elbow, looking straight at her. Then she realized that her heart was racing and she was breathing hard. “What happened?”

“You were making noise in your sleep. It sounded distressed.” Geralt didn’t seem to be a very emotionally open man, so it made sense when he looked uncomfortable as he said, “Do you want to… talk about it?”

Ciri shook her head quickly. She was the Lion Cub of Cintra. She could handle her own problems. “No. I’m fine. It’s not anything you need to worry about.” She quickly lay back down on the bed and pulled the blanket to her chin. Tears brimmed at her eyes and her jaw clenched. There really wasn’t anything to worry about. The sacking of Cintra was over. Nilfgaard had been held back at Sodden. Geralt was probably the one person on the Continent most capable of keeping her safe. She had no reason to be shaking where she lay, biting her tongue to keep a gasp inside. 

The silence was broken once more. “Would you like me to tell you a story?”

Ciri blinked. Geralt was not one to chat, and he seemed even less likely to sit around and spin tales for girls. 

“When I was a boy, my… my mother would tell me stories when I was frightened,” he continued after a moment. “I always slept more soundly afterwards.” 

There was a long pause. Ciri stared at the ceiling and the lines of the wood grain on it. Her grandmother had done the same when she was very little. She’d sit by Ciri’s bed when the storms came and thunder shook the castle and tell her about the great victories she and her ancestors had won in battle. Ciri didn’t understand war then--it was so much more grand and noble in the stories. Now, though, even after living through one, she would give anything to be back home, curled up in her grandmother’s arms and listening to tales of bravery and valor until she fell into a peaceful slumber.

“Yes, please,” she finally whispered. 

She heard shuffling, and then Geralt’s voice, low and rumbling. “Have you ever heard of devourers?”

Ciri could already feel her shoulders relaxing into the mattress. “No,” she whispered, and she curled up on her side to face the room. Geralt had moved from his bedroll to sit with his back against the foot end of the bed. He rested one forearm on his knee and tipped his head back so it rested comfortably on the blanket.

“They look like ugly, hulking old hags with beaky noses. Smell like maggots. You don’t want to meet one of them at night. I was hired to kill one lurking south of Novigrad…”

He didn’t describe the following events in as glorious detail as her grandmother had, but Ciri didn’t care. As she listened to him talk about the signs of a devourer nest, the preparation of oils, and the effectiveness of silver, her eyes fluttered closed, and a smile crossed her lips as she fell asleep, safe and sound.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know I had to put my boy Jaskier in here somewhere.

Geralt wasn’t in the habit of dwelling on his past hunts. There had been thousands, and most of them melded into each other in his memory. After a kill, the threat was eliminated and no longer required his attention. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yet, somehow, he found himself recounting them to a young princess in his care as she drifted off. Destiny had an odd way of twisting his habits.

The night Ciri had woken up screaming, Geralt felt something strange awaken in him. He already felt protective of the child, but this went further. Even when her life wasn’t in danger, her tears seemed an offense to his role. He wanted to comfort her, clear the worry and fear from her mind. So young a girl should not have her innocence ripped away from her so violently. So when he heard her unconscious whimpers and restless turning in her sleep, he knew that he would move mountains to relieve her.

Moving mountains may have been the easier task. It was painful to remember his mother and the nights he cried, shrinking from the shadows in the corners. She would rub circles into his back, telling him stories of brave knights who slew all the scary things in the dark so there would be none left to harm him. The memory no longer brought him comfort, and the idea that all of the evil in the world could be destroyed forever was foolishness.

But it had worked at the time, and he knew of no other way to quiet a child’s cries. So, for the past week, Geralt had taken the time before he rested to tell the story of one of his many, many contracts while Ciri fell asleep. She hadn’t woken in a cold sweat since, so its effectiveness was worth the effort.

Tonight, they were camped in the forests at the base of the Mahakam Mountains. It was cold here, but not so cold that a thick fur blanket couldn’t warm Ciri sufficiently through the night. Their fire crackled and popped, burning low but bright in the dark. Crickets chirped and the hoot of an owl could be heard occasionally. The sky was clear, so they could see a sparkling array of stars where it was visible between the treetops. All in all, not a bad place to rest.

Geralt was telling the story of the time he had freed the princess of Temeria from the curse of the striga. Ciri stared, wide-eyed and curled up in her blanket, as he described the process by which the striga formed. He imagined Triss chiding him for telling a child such gruesome details. She was probably right, but if Ciri was going to stay safe while traveling with him, she was going to have to know what types of danger she was going to encounter.

“The courtier confessed that he envied the king for his relationship with his sister,” he continued. “So he cursed the king, inadvertently cursing the sister and her offspring as well.” He was still amazed at the destruction humans could cause from feelings of jealousy. Ostrit disgusted him, and it served him right to be torn apart by the striga he’d created.

Ciri frowned, questioning. “Have you told me this story before?”

Geralt paused in his explanation. As far as he remembered, he had recounted his fights with a different breed of monster each night. Even if the stories themselves weren’t of particular note to him, he’d only given a week’s worth of them, which was definitely not long enough to forget. “No, I haven’t. Have you heard it somewhere else?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It just seems familiar.”

Geralt hummed. Perhaps the curse reminded her about the botchling he’d told her about three days ago. An understandable mixup for one just barely introduced to the world of hunting monsters.

“In any case, he finally gave up the curse he’d used. He’d killed a lamb on the full moon, recited a spell, and bathed in its blood until sunrise,” Geralt explained. “The halfwit had waited until sundown to say anything, which meant--”

“You had to fight the striga until dawn!” Ciri chirped, sitting up straight. 

Geralt narrowed his yellow eyes: not at Ciri herself, but how she knew the details of his hunt. “Who told you that?”

Ciri’s face brightened in a smile. “It’s from the song! 

_“He went, but did not raise his sword while in the monster’s lair  
For within the striga’s filth there lay a princess fair  
From dusk til dawn the creature raged  
A monumental battle waged  
Until the sunrise found her saved, under the White Wolf’s care!”_

She finished the verse and clapped with delight. “That’s where I know it from! The bard’s song, back in Cintra! I knew I’d heard it before.”

Geralt hummed, turning his head to the side. Of course. Jaskier. He must have written about that contract at some point. He couldn’t remember giving very many details to the bard, but it was possible that he’d gathered them from Triss later. 

A pang of guilt ran through his chest. It had been over a year since he’d let his anger loose on Jaskier on the mountain. Although he was angry for days afterward, he’d soon come to his senses and regretted that action. While part of him wanted to follow the bard, another didn’t know if he could stand to look Jaskier in the eyes again. A year was short compared to their previous separations, but those had never begun on such a sour note.

“So, the Cintran court enjoys a good ballad, does it? Your grandmother was definitely the type to request songs about slaying one’s foes.”

“No, actually,” Ciri replied, and a sad sort of smile crossed her face. “My grandmother loved battle songs, but she never liked the ones about the White Wolf. She wouldn’t let any of the musicians play them.” 

She blinked, and her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Wait, does that mean you’re the White Wolf?”

“Unfortunately.” Geralt thought the name sounded silly, but it was apparently something audiences liked.

“Wow.” Ciri pulled the fur blanket tighter around her, shivering with cold. Given the look on her face, it may have been from excitement. “I always loved those songs. They weren’t played in the castle, so I didn’t hear them much, but there was a bard who I saw a couple of times when I snuck out. He sang in the tavern and in the town square.”

The hint of a smile pulled at Geralt’s lips. That sounded familiar. “Was he a fair-skinned man, brown hair, playing a lute? Probably flirting with the local women?”

Ciri nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s how he looked. He sang so nicely, and the way he performed, you knew he loved to do it.” She cocked her head, looking up at Geralt. “Do you know him?”

The pleasant memory deflated immediately. He turned his eyes downward, feeling the guilt build. “I… I knew him.”

“Oh.” Ciri froze. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned him.”

“He’s not dead, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Geralt said, and she relaxed, relieved. “At least, not to my knowledge. He was a… friend of mine. He accompanied me on my hunts and wrote songs about them. He thought he could change the world’s opinion of me, from a butcher of men to their savior.” In truth, Jaskier had largely succeeded in his mission. It wasn’t often that Geralt was shunned out of a town. Even if he wasn’t welcomed everywhere with open arms, he was generally treated better, and he would still hear someone occasionally hum that irritating tune written decades ago. “But I pushed him away.”

“Why?” Ciri pressed. 

Geralt sighed. “I… I lost my temper. I blamed him for everything that seemed wrong with my life at the time. It was because of him that I met Yennefer. He brought me along to the feast where I claimed the Law of Surprise and became bound to you.” He exhaled in a ghost of a laugh. “Two people I care about deeply now.” He should be thanking Jaskier. But now their relationship was shattered. “We parted ways a year ago and I haven’t seen him since.”

There was a long silence. The crickets chirped and the fire crackled, but they were now deafening in the tension of the moment. Neither one of them knew how to respond. Geralt tossed a handful of brush onto the fire, and they watched it curl and burn.

After a few minutes, Ciri’s quiet voice broke the heavy silence. “Geralt? Do you think destiny changes? Or is it set from the moment you’re born?”

He wasn’t sure how to reply to that. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “For a long time I didn’t believe in it altogether. But given what’s happened, it seems it may exist after all.” He thought for a moment. “I know that destinies can be intertwined. But who’s to say if their joining was, in itself, destined from the beginning? I doubt anyone could know for sure.”

There was another pause, and Ciri spoke again. “So maybe, you were always meant to meet Yennefer and me?”

“Could be.”

“So, does that mean you were destined to be friends with that bard?”

Geralt raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t considered that. Meeting spontaneously in the back of a tavern wasn’t the way he imagined destiny to work, but it was a dramatic change in his life, in more ways than one. Did destiny have to be something definite, pronounced? Or could it exist even in the small events over the course of a lifetime? 

“Maybe. In any case, you need your rest. This was meant to put you to sleep, not keep you up worrying about destiny.”

After a minute, Ciri slowly lay back down on her bedroll and wrapped herself tightly in the blanket. Geralt rested against the trunk of a tree, settling in to watch over his ward and rebuke himself again for the way he’d treated Jaskier. The idea that they could have been destined to meet was heavy on his shoulders. Were they also destined to separate? He wasn’t sure if they’d ever meet again, and destiny was difficult to get a straight answer from.

As his eyes fell closed, Ciri piped up one last time. “What’s his name?”

The corners of his lips lifted in a slight smile, and he spoke the name he hadn’t said out loud in far too long. “Jaskier. His name is Jaskier.”

“Okay.”

He took a deep breath, inhaling the brisk night air. The crickets chirped, the fire crackled, an owl hooted, and they slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done! I love the relationship between these two, and the idea that Ciri would bring a more positive perspective to Mr. Doesn't-Like-To-Feel-Feelings. You know she's going to keep an eye out so they can find each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! This is my first fic on AO3, so I hope I set it all up right. 
> 
> Basically everyone in this show has PTSD, and they need to deal with it. Geralt and Ciri seem like quiet people who would both find comfort in a quiet night. I admittedly don't know Ciri's personality super well, so apologies if she's totally OOC. 
> 
> Honestly, this was going to be Geralt telling Ciri about Jaskier, but then it just so happened that Jaskier didn't really fit in the story (doesn't mean he's not still my favorite). 
> 
> Is this where I ask for kudos?


End file.
